Considerations on Universal Access and Unversal design as concerns Educational Software

This paper focuses on the accessibility of Educational Software, that is software expressly designed for educational purposes and thus aiming to support and enhance learning processes. We propose a few considerations about the different kinds of hindrances that a disabled student may encounter using educational software products. In this field, the word "accessibility" can be regarded as having more than one meaning, since educational software's accessibility does not concern only the material use of a product but also the possibility to fully access its educational contents, thus taking advantage of it from a cognitive point of view. The evaluation of educational software's accessibility must, therefore, be done at a finer level than with regular applicative software. After examining in detail the main characteristics which can make an educational software tool accessible, we argue whether the word U